Polylines can combine line or arc segments. There are two main methods to create an arc segment and three different type of methods for creating a circle:Īrc: Draws an arc segment from three pointsĪrcc: Draws an arc segment with a point, centre and angleĬircle: Draws a circle with a centre and one point.Ĭirclecr: Draws a circle with a centre and radius.Ĭircle3p: Draws a circle from three points Polylines: Polygon: draws a polygon with a center and a given number of sides Arc segments and circles: The most common type of lines are simple line segments, horizontal and vertical lines, rectangles or polygons: This is very intuitive so there’s no need for extra explanation. ![]() ![]() Here you will find a set of basic commands such as redo, undo, copy, cut and paste. The console asks about introducing or selecting each of the points. For instance, when drawing an arc segment, there’s one icon related with creating it using three points. Most of icons that you will find in the toolbox, will be self-explanatory with the requested info at the console. Therefore, it is very recommended that once the design is done, to transform all possible individual line segments or arc segments into polylines so that work time during cutting is reduced. In a similar case, if a line is contiguous to an arc segment, then both entities can be transformed into a polyline. If two separate lines have a common point at their ends, they can be transformed into a polyline. The reason it is very simple, polylines are indeed an ordered list of line segments and arc segments, which implies a contour which will also represent a continuous cutting (without “jumps” from one place to another). For lasser cutting it is highly recommended the use of polylines against line segments, arc segments, circles, ellipses, splines or any other curve, because the laser cutting machine can generally manufacture pieces much faster implemented with polylines than with the other curves. ![]() They are usually written with the following notation in the console:įor instance, coordinate (40,30) is located 40 units to the right of the origin and 30 units above the origin.Ĭartesian coordinates can be also be referred to be relative to some specific point, different from the origin, which can be specified in the console with the following point (40,30) relative to the point (10,20) can be expressed as we will explain some few commands which will help us to generate basic designs in QCAD. If we want to introduce an absolute coordinate in QCAD, we must indicate the X and Y coordinates separated with a colon “,”. All absolute values are referred to the drawing origin shon in the following image: QCAD includes a 2D Cartesian coordinate system with absolute and relative values. In particular, since this entry is oriented to serve as a basis for designing 2d drawings for laser cutting, we can use the standard template for laser cutting or create our own layers and assign a different color for each layer as shown: By default, QCAD always has the 0 layer, but we can add more. In the property window, there’s a window with the layers information. Layers allow us to organize information with different properties and they can be easily activated/deactivated. LayersĮvery CAD design is organized in layers. The best place to get some information can be found in with the latest features and also the reference manual. ![]() This entry is not intended to be a complete reference manual for QCAD. The console for introducing commands is just below an the design area is in the center of all. On the left there’s a toolbox and a set of property windows on the right. QCAD is a CAD (Computed Aided Design) software which includes a menu bar on top with an icon bar just below the menu bar. In this entry, we will show how to use some of the basic features of QCAD in order to create 2D designs which can be used for laser cutting.
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